Only New Orleans tops Detroit area population loss

DETROIT, March 22 (Reuters) - Hit by a slump in the American auto industry, Detroit and its suburbs lost more residents in the past six years than any comparable U.S. area except hurricane-battered New Orleans, census data released on Thursday showed.

Wayne County, Michigan, lost more than 89,000 residents from 2000 to 2006 -- a loss of 4 percent of the county's 2 million residents. The decline is behind only Orleans Parish in Louisiana, which lost 261,000 people in the same ...